Recent years have seen an increase in the number of components that may be included in a typical home theatre system. These components may include surround sound receivers, videocassette recorders (VCR), digital videodisk (DVD) players, compact disk (CD) players, set top boxes, televisions, as well as other entertainment components. These home entertainment components are typically controllable through the use of individual remote control units.
A home with a typical home theater system may have any number of different remote control units to control the numerous remotely controlled components. These remote control units not only tend to clutter coffee tables and drawers, they may confuse a user wanting to rapidly select the remote control unit needed to operate a desired component.
In an effort to reduce the number of remote control units required to control a borne entertainment system, a number of manufacturers have developed programmable “universal” remote control units such as the one illustrated in FIG. 1. As shown in FIG. 1, a typical programmable remote control unit (100) likely includes a microprocessor (120) in communication with both a keypad or button array (150) and an infra-red (I/R) code storage random access memory (RAM) (110). A user may use the keypad (150) to enter component codes into the microprocessor (120) corresponding to the entertainment components the user desires to control. When the component codes have been entered into the programmable universal remote control (100), the microprocessor (120) may then access I/R codes stored in the I/R code storage RAM (110) that are needed to control the desired entertainment components. With the I/R codes identified, the programmable universal remote control (100) may control the desired components by transmitting commands to the components through the I/R output circuit (140) and the I/R transmitter (145). The programmable universal remote control (100) may also receive data from the components through the I/R receiver (135) and the I/R input circuit (130). While the prior art programmable universal remote control unit (100) allows a user to control multiple components with a single remote, the keys on the keypad of the universal remote control are typically pre-labeled and generic, making them difficult to use. In addition, because such remote control units are generic in nature, they tend to be missing device-specific functions relevant to each component that were available on the original remote control unit for that component.
In order to overcome the generic nature of previous programmable remote control units, liquid crystal display (LCD) touch screen remote control units have been developed as illustrated in FIG. 2. An LCD touch screen remote (200) includes a microprocessor (120) in communication with an I/R code storage RAM (110) similar to the programmable universal remote control. The LCD touch screen remote (200) also includes an I/R receiver (135) and transmitter (145) connected to the microprocessor (120) through an I/R input circuit (130) and an I/R output circuit (140) respectively. The LCD touch screen remote (200) may receive component codes and access I/R codes that have been stored in the I/R code storage RAM (110). Once the desired I/R codes have been located and implemented by the microprocessor, the LCD touch screen displays operation buttons on the LCD touch screen to allow the user to make desired selections. If the user desires, he/she may customize the LCD buttons.
While the features of LCD touch screen remotes allow the buttons to be customized, the implementation of LCD touch screens introduce additional concerns. LCD touch screens tend to be difficult to read in low light. LCD touch screens also lack the tactile feel of actual buttons that may help a user rapidly access a desired button. Moreover, LCD touch screens tend to require more power and subsequently more batteries as compared to typical remote control units.